In general, an instrument panel is installed at the front inside an occupant compartment. The instrument panel is elongated laterally across the width of the automobile, the steering wheel and instrument cluster are mounted at the portion to the front of the driver's seat, and a passenger airbag device and a glove box are mounted at the portion to the front of a passenger seat.
The instrument panel includes a foam material capable of absorbing impacts, which absorbs impacts in the event that the automobile is involved in a collision, so as to minimize injury to the driver and the passenger from the instrument panel. In this aspect, the instrument panel may be called a crash pad.
The glove box is configured to include a glove box door defining a storage space in which items are stored, and a glove box housing on which a glove box door is hinge-coupled. After the crash pad is inserted and installed in the glove box housing, the bottom of the glove box door is hinge-coupled to the glove box housing. That is, the glove box door uses the hinge-coupled bottom thereof as a center of rotation, to thus form a structure in which the top thereof rotates toward the occupant compartment to open and rotates in reverse toward the housing to close.
In a glove box with such a structure, however, in order to prevent items stored in the storage space of the glove box door from spilling into the occupant compartment, the angle opening into the occupant compartment is restricted, which limits the size of items that can be stored in the storage space.
Therefore, a glove box has recently been developed that does not define the storage space in the glove box door, but defines the storage space in the glove box housing, so that the glove box door has only the function of opening and closing the storage space so that items stored in the storage space do not fall out. Thus, the storage space can be maximized and the opening angle of the glove box door can be increased, allowing various items to be stored. A glove box with such a structure can be called a multi box in light of the fact that a greater range of items can be stored than in conventional glove boxes.
However, in order to maximize the opening of the door, the multi box must have a groove formed on the crash pad at the bottom of the door to avoid interference, which presents the problem of restricting the interior design of the occupant compartment.
Also, because the center of the crash pad is formed with an inward curvature compared to both ends thereof in order to secure space inside the occupant compartment, the door must also be formed with a curvature that matches the curvature of the crash pad. When setting the amount of curvature for the door, a suitable curvature must be set in order for the door to smoothly rotate when the door is opened and closed, and thus, the setting of the curvature of the door is another limitation that presents a problem.